Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/37

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Louise Morey Bowman


THE WHITE GARDEN

YOU care for me (oh, so tenderly),
And you bring me to sit in the garden,
Watching me all so anxiously,
And I love you and ask your pardon,
Because I can laugh no longer.
But I try—oh, I try—to tell you
That it's really not all sad
And that here in my white, white garden
I am almost, almost glad!
For love (O my Lover!) is stronger
Than blood and blackness and death.

He was such a glorious lover!
(Oh, the years of golden weather!)
And how we joyed in the colour
That we found in the world together:
From the tawny shades of our Eastern rugs
And the gleam of our copper-lustre jugs,
To the rose and the green and the weird ice-blue
Of winter and summer and springtime hue!
Oh, the hyacinth-beds when the 'south-west' blew!
But love (O my Lover!) is stronger Than blood or blackness or death.

I wish I could make you understand
As my Lover does in his far-off land.
For he knows why my flowers are all silver white;
He knows why the sun is like pale moonlight;
He knows why the brown and golden bees
Are white, and the grass and the whispering trees.
Only the sky so far away
Grows bluer and nearer every day—
For love (O my Lover!) is stronger
Than blood and blackness and death.

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